Henderson ready for a new challenge

Share This Article:

June 8, 2011

PLAINVIEW – Butch Henderson sits in his new office on the second floor of the Laney
Student Activities Center. It’s a simple office with a desk, computer, two chairs,
and a closet at the end of the room. The walls are still bare and the only decorative
item in the room is a blue and gold football helmet sitting on the edge of his desk.

Henderson is decked out in khaki pants and a comfortable red and gold shirt. Although
he has been on the job for a few weeks, Henderson has yet to stockpile a number of
Wayland athletics shirts. He said the red and gold was just what he pulled out of
the closet on that particular morning, not unlike so many mornings before. After all,
for the previous 23 years, he has donned the red and gold on a daily basis as the
leader of the Lubbock Coronado High School Mustangs.

“This is just what I picked out of the closet this morning,” he grins.

After a lifetime of experiences, one can only imagine that there is a closet full
of memories in the red and gold. But as the 2011 football season approaches things
have changed for Henderson. He is now making room in the closet for a new set of school
colors and a new set of memories, this time in Blue and Gold.

The Lord works in mysterious ways

In November 2010, after 23 years on the sidelines at Coronado, Henderson was asked
to resign by the school. When he refused, the coach was reassigned by the school district.

“It all boils down to winning,” Henderson told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in a
Nov. 11, 2010, article. “In some ways it’s disappointing but in other parts, like
I said, Karen (his wife) and I are looking at it from a standpoint of this is a new
chapter in our lives. I don’t know what God has in store for us but it’s in His hands
and the direction He takes us has got to be good.”

Karen has been at Henderson’s side throughout his coaching career. The couple celebrated
their 37th wedding anniversary earlier this summer, and Henderson will begin his 37th
season as a football coach this fall. Throughout his years on the sideline, Karen
has been an important part of his life not only off the field, but on it as well.

“She is not a stand-off, outside watcher,” Henderson said. “She was involved with
the athletes and wrote them notes and things. She is involved in their lives.”

Yet as the coaching couple prepared to face a new, unknown chapter in their lives,
events were also unfolding at Wayland. On Dec. 8, 2010, Wayland hired its first football
coach since the program was discontinued in the late 1940s. Jeff Lynn was to oversee
recruiting through the winter and spring with a target to begin practice in the fall
of 2011. Wayland’s first class will be a leadership class that will work throughout
2011 to begin competition in 2012.

Lynn worked tirelessly for four months, piling up recruits. In April, however, he
was suddenly called away from his commitment to WBU to take care of family issues,
opening the door for a new coach.

When Henderson was reassigned at Coronado, he knew his coaching career wasn’t over,
but he wasn’t sure where his next stop would be. Coaching the college ranks in Plainview
wasn’t really on his radar. But when the opportunity presented itself, Butch and Karen
decided to take the plunge.

Football is in the blood

Henderson grew up in Artesia, N.M., the son of a football coach.

“I grew up watching him work,” he said. “My father had to make a decision real early,
even before I was born, whether he was going to be a football coach or become a pastor.”

Henderson said his father provided an example of how one can incorporate his Christian
faith into the coaching professions, teaching life lessons to young men as they work
through the program. Henderson credits much of his own approach to his father, but
much of his understanding to his mother.

“Moms play a big role in being able to say that what dad is doing is important. My
mom really pointed all three of us children to the good things, and to what dad was
doing with his coaching,” Henderson said. “From the time I was in elementary school,
I knew I was going to be a coach.”

Henderson grew up around his father’s programs, where he learned what it took to work
tirelessly in season and out to be a coach. And while pressured to one day take over
for his father, he also felt a calling to take his game to Texas.

“I grew up in Artesia and people would ask, ‘Are you going to come back to Artesia
to coach?’ I said, no. I’m going to go to Texas,” Henderson explained. “Somehow God
had planted that in my thoughts and that is where I headed.”

Henderson left coaching in Artesia to his younger brother, Cooper, who has spent nearly
25 years building a state powerhouse in southeast New Mexico. Their sister, Linda,
also entered the coaching profession, working with basketball and track teams in Sonora.
She later left the coaching game to focus on the classroom and raise her family. She
has since retired from teaching in Georgetown.

Yet in all his years of coaching, separated by only a few miles of desert highway,
Butch and Cooper Henderson have never faced off on the gridiron. … and Butch said
they never will.

“It will not happen,” he said. “It’s one of those things as a family we just are not
going to do.”

Henderson, 58, said the lack of competition among siblings on the field also translates
to their off-the-field relationships.

“There has never been a lot of competition among us,” he said. “When we get together
with the family it is just fun. You talk. You laugh. You find out what is going on
in each other’s life.”

Family is important to Henderson. He and Karen have four children. Their oldest son,
Rex, works as an assistant coach for his uncle in Artesia. Their daughter, Jodi, is
well-known by many of the faculty and staff at Wayland. Jodi ran track and played
soccer at Wayland, competing in five national track meets for the Pioneers. Janna
Henderson is also heavily involved in athletics, playing on a traveling flag football
team that has competed in tournaments from Vancouver to Florida. And, Rick, the Henderson’s
youngest son, is a student at Howard Payne University.

Henderson said raising four children with a coach’s schedule was difficult, but it
was made possible with the work and dedication of his wife.

“She is really the one who holds everything together,” he said. “When you are coaching
you are in and out, and she has to take care of the kids. She has done a great job
with the kids in our family. She is a big part of what I do.”

Teaching the athletes

Not that Henderson hasn’t does his best to raise the kids – his own four as well as
the hundreds of young men he has worked with throughout the years. A strong Christian,
Henderson has brought his Christian witness and faith to the football field. That’s
not always easy working in a public state school where any expression of religion
is generally forbidden. Henderson said this doesn’t mean one has to set aside his
Christianity to work in public schools, however.

“When you are a Christian it comes out in who you are and what you do. That is who
you are,” Henderson said.

Actually sharing his faith and speaking openly about God was difficult at times, but
Henderson said it wasn’t impossible.

“You have to pray a lot for God’s wisdom in when and how you say those things so that
you don’t overstep your bounds,” he said.

Although the coach will now have to freedom to express his Christianity openly at
a faith-based school, Henderson said his approach to teaching on the field won’t change
much. While demonstrating a Christian faith he wants to teach the young men under
his watch that football can be a learning tool for situations they will face later
in life.

“What we learn on the football field has to integrate into life later on for it to
be important,” Henderson said. “In West Texas there is so much pressure on the kids
to play and perform well, and I think that takes a lot of motivation. We have to take
that and show this is how it is going to be later in life. This is how it works.”

Teaching those life lessons just feeds into the joy that Henderson feels on the field.
He loves the sport. He loves the game. And he even loves practice.

“I enjoy practice. I enjoy the teaching part of it,” he said. “I enjoy the week and
the preparation as you get ready for a game. You start seeing a game plan being implemented
and growing.”

As recruits start hitting campus this fall, all they will have to look forward to
is practice in preparation for an upcoming season. It’s doubtful, however, that practice
will ever get boring. Henderson said he likes to keep practice fast-paced and up-tempo.

“They are going to be running and going, and I’m going to be running and going,” he
said. “I’m not a coach that is going to walk around and watch other people coach.
I want to coach.”

Henderson said he will hire other coaches and let them take care of their responsibilities,
but he will be in the trenches as well, teaching the basics and fundamentals for quarterbacks
and the offense. Henderson will implement a spread offense and throw the ball about
60 percent of the time.

“We will get the ball in space and have athletes and receivers who can run with the
football,” Henderson said. “It will be a fast-tempo offense. We will never huddle.
We will keep moving. Sometimes we will be moving fast; sometimes we will be moving
slow. But we will control the tempo of the game and not let the defense dictate tempo.”

Defensively, Henderson said the scheme will depend on the defensive coordinator. The
coach wants someone who has some understanding of the collegiate level, and someone
he is comfortable giving control of the defense. The plan is to have a defensive coordinator
in place this summer. The coaches can then look at bringing in up to four graduate
assistants to help with coaching, with the possibility of hiring two more assistants
in 2012.

It is projected that nearly 100 recruits will be on campus this fall to begin work
toward the 2012 season. This will give the coaching staff time to evaluate players
and determine what additional needs the team might have. The coaches will then begin
recruiting to bring in additional talent for the fall of 2012. Coming from a high
school background, Henderson said recruiting will be something new to which he will
have to adapt.

“My learning curve is in recruiting and being able to get the athletes here,” Henderson
said.

Henderson said he knows all the high school coaches in the area, but getting them
to send their kids to Wayland will be beneficial. He also said he will need to hire
a staff that knows some of the tricks of the trade in tracking down junior college
and transfer students who would be a good fit for the Pioneer program.

A winning attitude

Henderson said just facing a practice schedule for the fall of 2012 may send him into
football withdrawal, but he will get used to it.

“The brain just starts thinking season,” he said. “We will think football and think
practice, but we will not have those games to think about.”

However, the Pioneers will have plenty of time to focus on their first game – a Sept.
1, 2012, match against Monterrey Tech to be played in San Antonio. Other games that
season will include road games at Howard Payne, Texas College, Austin College, and
Bacone College. Home games will be played at the Plainview High School field and the
2012 opponents will be McMurry University, Langston University, Southwest Assemblies
of God University, Southern Nazarene and Oklahoma Panhandle State University.

While the first game may be more than a year away, Henderson wants his recruits to
know that they face high expectations.

“The biggest thing is that I want our kids to come in with the attitude that we are
going to win,” he said. “If you are not careful, people will put a ceiling on you;
you are just starting a program; this is all you can do. I don’t want our kids to
come in with that picture. I want our kids coming in thinking we are from West Texas
and West Texas people like to win. That is the expectation for us.